Application of 5 M’s of Management on Indian Railways

Abstract

Business environment always remains in a transition phase evolving continuously as per the changes in technology, political situations, changes in policy and economic developments. All the business organizations have to evolve continuously to keep pace with the changing environment following different management techniques to achieve Business excellence. The term “excellence” was introduced by Tom Peters in 1982 and it led to development of various Management theories and principles to evaluate and improve the performance of an organization. Business excellence should be all-pervasive: improvements should be perceptible to all stakeholders — customers, investors, channel partners, supply chain, and so on. Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma are most commonly used theories to achieve Business excellence. Indian Railways has been the backbone of freight and passenger transport of India over the years spread over a network of around 66000 routes Kilometer carrying over 1.1 billion Tones of freight per annum and more than 3 crore passengers per day. However Indian Railways has been going through a financial crisis through last many years witnessing a continuous decline in the market share of transport. This public transporter is in need of a paradigm change to remain competitive in current environment where larger capacity road trucks, more comfortable buses, cheaper airlines and development of Inland waterways are posing strict challenge and threat of further erosion in the market share. Indian Railways has not changed its business model which worked well in the monopolistic conditions of yesteryear. In this paper we will critically evaluate the performance of Indian Railways and the changes required to remain competitive in transport business in changing technological and business environment.